Chapter 28 I’ll Grieve When I’m Avenged
I’ll Grieve When
I’m Avenged
M
y room isn’t silent. It’s far from it.
Like everything else, it’s suffocating. I’m suffocating. Drifting in doubt. Dripping in pain.
My grief flickers off and on, like a light switch, every time I feel another person. Once they’ve left my radius, I’m with myself once more. Then another comes along, and I become them.
I’m about to become a princess.
Calista bursts into my room, her presence unmistakably persistent. I hardly have the energy—or the heart—for her right now.
She’s ready to fight if I don’t agree with her. It’s in the set of her jaw, the fire in her eyes. This isn’t an uncommon feeling for her—she has a way of making everything seem like a battle, whether she means to or not.
I can’t handle a fight today.
As I lie in my bed, she says, “I have a plan.”
When I don’t answer immediately, my chest tightens with angry breath—the fight in her grows. But I haven’t said a word in days, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to.
Calista doesn’t know about Azaire—I can tell.
I prefer it to the empty apologies.
I prefer her concern to my grief.
I stand and shift my focus to her. Without a word, she turns on her heel and walks away, leaving me no choice but to follow her across the suite and into her room. She sits on her large bed and pats the space next to her. I sit down quietly, unsure of what comes next.
Her excitement is strong, but so is her fear of failure.
There’s a moment of silent anticipation.
Then, “We’ll take Desdemona’s necklace at the Collianth.
” Her voice is low but urgent. “The place will be packed—crowds everywhere, people mingling, distractions at every corner. I’ll target the moment when her attention is pulled away, when she’s distracted by the chaos or conversation.
Then I’ll approach from behind, take the necklace, and vanish before she realizes what’s happened. No one will suspect a thing.”
I stare at Calista, her words slowly seeping into my mind.
“Desdemona,” I sound out each syllable. The name is heavy on my tongue. I hadn’t thought about her in days—Desdemona’s necklace… the stone… the prophecy.
Time fractures with the stone.
The promise of an end.
For a moment, I don’t care about an end. Maybe I’d enjoy watching this universe falter, watching everything unravel. The thought is bitter, but it lingers, like a temptation I can’t quite push away.
No. I force the thought from my mind. It’s not who Ma raised me to be. I’m not vindictive. I’m not a bad person. But the weight of everything feels like it’s closing in, and I wonder—just for a second—if I’m strong enough to resist it.
“Yeah.” Calista drags the word out, her gaze sharp. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” I say, though I feel anything but.
Desdemona. Kapha. Leiholan. It all crashes into me, a wave of forgotten details and emotions, drowning my thoughts. My pulse quickens. Is Leiholan okay? Is he alive? The questions claw at me, but I’m too afraid to answer them.
More than that—the kapha wanted something from Desdemona. I felt it.
But I didn’t figure out what.
“There’s something off about Desdemona,” I finish, realizing how long I’ve lingered on this thought. It was always silent—at the back of my mind.
“Tell me about it,” Calista mutters as she examines her nails. The twinge of her jealousy is sharp, almost pungent, but still more bearable than the weight of my grief.
I shake my head. “Not like that.”
Calista glances up, a crease forming between her eyebrows, angry that I can sense her jealousy. She hates when I read her—as if I have a choice. But the monster believed Desdemona would be its savior.
It came to her for saving.
There’s something far worse with Desdemona than her relationship with Lucian or Calista’s feelings about it.
Something to do with the monsters. She isn’t their master, but she’s something.
And it wasn’t just the kapha. The moonaro felt the same.
The fatta scorpion might have, too.
I whisper as I realize, “She’s involved.”
Azaire.
“Elaborate.”
“The monsters,” I say. It’s elaboration enough.
Calista weighs her options. Her anxiety feels immovable beneath my skin. Trapping me as steadily as iron bars. Turning my blood to rust.
A long sigh escapes her mouth. Then words tumble from her, her voice small. “After the Gerner, my mom told me to watch her for anything out of the ordinary.”
A queen wanted to watch Desdemona? The queen of Folkara—the same person who ordered Ma’s death and used a monster to do so.
That confirms it, then. That’s why Lucian suddenly hated Desdemona. He knew what I didn’t; she was involved with Lilac’s attack.
She was involved in Azaire’s.
Maybe I didn’t ask her enough questions when I had her. She might not be their master, but she could be working with whoever is.
If a queen is watching her, she’s just as important as I thought.
“I think we have to kill her,” I mumble. “To stop the prophecy.” That’s not all, but it’s all Calista needs to know.
When will the students start to realize Azaire’s absence?
When will they know?
Calista’s eyes widen, looking at me like she doesn’t know me.
“Your jealousy,” I say. “I assume it’s because of Lucian’s interest in her—you fear losing power to her. So don’t look at me like that. I know you want Desdemona dead, too.”
“Fine.” Calista breaks eye contact. “If we get the necklace, I’ll help you.”
The idea of vengeance feels sweet. Too sweet. I hold out a hand to Calista. “It’s a deal?”
Calista rolls her eyes but grabs my hand. “It’s a deal.”
We’ll stop the prophecy. We’ll save the universe.
And I’ll grieve when I’m avenged.
?
When Lucian starts leaving campus more often, I find myself going to Azaire’s tree. I sit under his leaves, watching white flowers blossom with the gray, and waiting for the day that I feel him here as more than a corpse tangled in roots.
I did all I could to save his soul, and yet, I can’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t enough.
His soul, not just his body, but his soul.
Azaire once said, What if we’re Zola’s way of finding balance? Putting together two people with a similar predisposition? I didn’t admit it at the time, but I clung to that idea. I thought that, for the first time, the universe was giving back all that I’ve lost.
I thought Azaire was that—an apology from Zola herself.
But now, I’m starting to think we were never meant for balance at all. Maybe we were put together to be torn apart.
Azaire had written, I know that change is inevitable, that there is nothing constant in life. But when I look into her eyes, I don’t believe it. What I do believe is that, more than anything, she and I will break those odds.
But we didn’t break the odds, did we? We proved them.
I turn toward the trunk of his tree, my hand brushing the bark, silently pleading for something—anything. Just one flicker of feeling, one sign he’s still with me.
But my pleas go unanswered.
“Please,” I beg Zola, the stars, the sky—anyone and anything that will listen. My forehead presses against the trunk, the roughness scraping my skin. At least, for a moment, the pain is a distraction. “I need to feel him. I have to know he’s somewhere.”
The words break in my throat, as fragile as a piece of glass, as if speaking them might bring him back—just for a moment.
This goes unanswered, too.
I’m fighting so desperately to hold on to who I am, to not let the anger and the anguish take me down with it. But it’s getting harder. I feel lost, broken. I feel screwed. This world—this cruel universe—makes me feel everything, every unbearable emotion, only to rip away the one thing I want most.
I lean down and pull at the grass beneath my feet. Ripping it out of the ground, feeling it die in my hands. I hope the universe feels it, too.
I hate it. Zola, Sulva, Ayan, I hate every god with everything in me. As I fall to my knees, I want them to fall with me.
For Desdemona to fall with me.
Azaire is gone.
His soul’s not in this tree, and he’s not in the sky, either. He is gone.
Utterly, entirely, irreversibly nothing.
And if Zola will take from me, I’ll take from her. I’ll be vindictive, I’ll be angry, I’ll be ruthless—I’ll be the things Ma was in those journals. The things, I realize, she was protecting me from becoming. The reason that Pa fought so dearly to keep me from going down this path.
He took my emotion to protect me—but reversely, he’s damned me.
I’m not powerless like this universe wants me to be. I’m far from it. I won’t go crying into this night; I’ll go shouting and kicking and screaming. Fighting and killing.
I’ll topple this world with my mere will.
My hands weave through the grass, nails digging into dirt. The ground beneath me trembles with such force that leaves and branches begin to fall, swirling around me like a storm. They settle in a perfect circle.
None of them touch me.
Screw the gods. What have they given me? A life of endless sorrow, of death I never asked for, and power that only tore me apart.
Why am I holding on to this idea of being a good person—this tame Eunoia, trying to protect the world from me—when all the world has done is take from me, and all I’ve done is cry for it?
As I’m about to slip into the darkest trenches of my mind, the unmistakable feeling of a person approaching pulls me to the present. Lucian. I sit as unassumingly as I can manage.
But the anger is too strong.
“Don’t do it,” the boy says.
I ignore him.
Lucian sits next to me, and I stay silent for a while. As Lucian looks at Azaire’s tree, he feels unmistakable guilt. I watch him carefully, from the corner of my eye, trying to understand why.
Finally, I find my courage and ask, “Why do you feel like guilt?”
Lucian shrugs, not meeting my eyes. “Because I am guilty.”
I turn to him, searching for his gaze. If I can just see his eyes, I won’t need a verbal answer, I’ll feel it.
“It’s because of Desdemona?” I ask.
He must know she’s involved with the monsters and Lilac’s attack.
“Desdemona?” Lucian repeats, confused, leaving me just as bewildered.